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At the hospital where Eric is, there is a Bluthner grand piano in the foyer with a notice which (paraphrased) invites everyone to play it but tells parents to keep uncontrolled brats off it. A girl was playing the other evening as I left the hospital, about grade 4ish? She was having fun and everyone was enjoying it. Lovely.

I was up there from 1715 until 1900 tonight and I played a total of five hundred and fifty scales, including 200 'penalty' scales, a hundred for each hand. I really wish I had not gone within a million miles of Fairdeal Music today, I could have done without all those extra scales just because I made one balls up in a music shop. And it's always the same two scales, D major and D minor. D being the initial letter of Disaster.... I wouldn't mind but I can actually be doing other things instead of spending 1 3/4 hours playing penalty scales when just doing my regular nightly quota of them should suffice.

I wonder if it's my little disability that makes it so difficult for me to learn to play the piano? I remember broaching this matter with one of my old piano teachers, her unsympathetic response being 'I'm not a psychotherapist!!' I had thought of consulting a shrink but what if he or she tells me they don't play the piano so they can't answer my question with conviction??

I did get the same feeling in the music shop (I get it in any music shop, or on any piano that's not my own Yamaha) like I'm in some sort of exam. I know there are more distractions, plus my wife was with me, however as I've said before it's only a simple bloody scale of D and not the Minute Waltz at the Albert Hall, and after 8 years, the most retarded of Forrest Gump-like characters should be able to grasp the principle.

Still, we carry on in something we hope is hope.........or maybe nope.

Last edited by dave brum on 10 Feb 2014, 08:23, edited 2 times in total.

Gill the Piano wrote:At the hospital where Eric is, there is a Bluthner grand piano in the foyer with a notice which (paraphrased) invites everyone to play it but tells parents to keep uncontrolled brats off it. A girl was playing the other evening as I left the hospital, about grade 4ish? She was having fun and everyone was enjoying it. Lovely.

Why don't they levy a £10 fine for tamperers, like they do at the Anglican church in Tanworth-in-Arden, Warwickshire??? Money to go towards patients benevolent fund. I have the picture somewhere in my posting history of the stern notice placed by said church instrument £10 FINE FOR ANYONE FOUND TAMPERING WITH THE ORGAN. 'Tis the ultimate mark of shame in Tanworth, to be a frightfully awful little organ tamperer.

I have that sign on my harmonium!
Stoppit with the scales business now, Dave, or you'll give yourself another hangup. Everyone knows D major is a s*d, so just do everything a couple of times then leave it and play something you'll enjoy. 200 times is excessive and doesn't achieve much.

But i was under the impression that 'practice makes perfect', especially scales/arpeggios as they are the building blocks of music. And that repeated practice would help to iron out bad habits even though 550 scales does indeed venture a long way into OCD territory. I also believed that playing lots and lots of scales and things would be better than not playing anything at all.

Or at least I did when I got home from work and read your reply, Gill. Following dinner I went upstairs and played D major thirty times, as outlined in my practice schedule. Then I moved onto D minor, got to ten and drifted into D major. I really was far too tired to do a hundred penalty scales (the 200 I did last night has taught me absolutely nothing) so I just turned the thing off, said a swear word, and just made a nice cup of tea for the both of us. You need not worry Gill, No more of this pointless undertaking as it's getting me absolutely nowhere.

It's a sure fire thing isn't it? Whenever I touch a piano something always goes wrong and I'm sick and tired of all the disappointment and bad luck. I know I'm doing it wrong, the trouble is I never seem to be able to find the CORRECT way to succeed at learning the piano. Why?? Every method I try always ends in failure. Do I not deserve to succeed???

I don't want to give up again as that would be going back on what I promised myself but it's as if I've now ran out of options I can explore. So now what???

dave brum wrote:But i was under the impression that 'practice makes perfect', especially scales/arpeggios as they are the building blocks of music. And that repeated practice would help to iron out bad habits

It's more a question of Practice Makes Permanent. And I know you're not exactly doing this, but when I ask some of my kids how they're going to learn something, they say they'll practise it again and again. "So if it's wrong, you'll do it again and again ntil you get it right?" "yes" "You'll never get it right. If you make a mistake, and you do it again, you've just doubled the chance you'll do it the next time"

I think Gill said the same thing: isolate the place where the problem is, right down to just a movement between 2 notes. Becasue it's ony a wrong note if you meant to play it. If you didn't mean to play it, it's a wrong movement. Find the movement which you're doing wrong. (eg. is it G to F# in the scale of D? Is it in the right hand? Then you're not turning on to the black key, you're going right over on to the white) When you've done the right movement right a couple of times try adding a note before and after until it's coming out right in the middle of a longer phrase.

I discovered a brilliant way to find these places you need to isolate as well, in pieces rather than scales - you ARE playing pieces, aren't you Dave? - first you record yourself playing, preferably not the whole piece, just a line or two. Then you play back the recording with the music in front of you and a pencil, and you mark places where you stumbled- or in the later perfecting-it stages, where you so much as hesitated. Then you record yourself again. And you play it back again with the same score as you marked last time, and see if any places you notice coincide with the places you marked last time. Never mind any new ones, they may just be one-off blips; you have now found the places where it's become a habit. A Fred moment (I think I did tell you about Fred, your "unconscious", I won't waste time now, I'll post it later). Those are the places you need to isolate (kick Fred out and do it yourself) like I suggested in the paragraph above.

As I've said before, my problem is not that I do not know where the notes are for the respective scales. Neither is it anything to do with my fingering (I've practised the scales for far too long so I know how to 'feel' a scale). It is my concentration. I keep forgetting what scale I'm playing when I'm playing it and as again I've touched upon, this may be something to do with the fact that a) I am not a confident player and never have been and b) I suffer with a social condition known as 'extreme acute loneliness' which affects every aspect of my life (which is why I've been told to seek voluntary work in a book/music store as a therapeutic measure). You would have probably heard of the saying 'no man is an island', well EAL sufferers ARE islands. My wife is one too, probably why we're so attracted.

I've also said before that I always tend to revert to the default scale of C but with no black notes, so if I lose concentration I accidentally ignore the black notes, or play the wrong black notes, as in the case of both the D scales.

I don't play pieces, Gizzy. That means having to read music and you'll be well aware that is a no-no for me, despite trying (and failing) to master the art of reading music. If you read some of my postings from a couple of weeks ago, you'll know I've been attempting to 'invent' a simple easy piano notation system I can understand so I can actually play some pieces, the system involved finger numbers, colour codes and commas for phrasing on two lines rather than dots and squiggles. However there were just too many flaws in that, so I abandoned it. What's better. Playing only scales or not playing at all?? Though what I was doing with regard to trying to penalise and torture myself in order to educate and discipline myself at the piano was indeed obsessive, which was something I warned Natalie against a few weeks ago.

Maybe you are right, Gizzy. I am indeed my own worst enemy. And maybe that confidence bashing piano teacher up the road was right in that I am both awkward, and a teachers' misfortune (which is why I have to do it myself).

And maybe you're right Gill in that I have a general attitude issue. But I'll never know. No pain-o practice today. Just listening to Glenn Gould showing me aurally how the thing SHOULD be played.

I am NOT planning on selling my piano. Neither will I be donating what little piano books I have to my bookshop. No knee jerk reactions.

Last edited by dave brum on 11 Feb 2014, 11:12, edited 1 time in total.

There's this elderly musician who comes into our shop called Mr Khan (not 'Citizen' Khan). He plays every type of Asian percussion instrument from the tabla to the more bassy dhol, plus a bit of sitar too. I asked him 'do you play the harmonium' and he said that's the only popular Asian musical instrument he doesn't play. He likes his rock CDs, especially as one of the other Monday volunteers is a guitarist in a rock band and he's standing nattering to Mr Khan about Jimmy Page and McCartney for hours.

Look for Jane Bom Bane on YT Gill, the harmonium queen of Brighton, rather keen on wearing the odd gaily decorated hat and even goldfish bowl on her 'ead as she sings and plays

Had an evening long online chat with a qualified, very genuine and trustworthy piano teacher who has genuinely offered to help me out. Yet she's 200 miles away and distance gets in the way.

There are lots and lots of very good piano teachers in the United Kingdom only too willing to take an abject failure such as myself and turn it into a success. And that's a good thing. But it really is a postcode lottery.

I cried myself to sleep last night. Haven't done that for years, but trying to learn the piano and failing all of the time is really making me unhappy.

So I've come to a decision. I'm going to give it a month and if I still feel the same way on March 13th, then that really will be it, I shall resign myself to the fact I shall never do what I've always wanted to do - and maybe regret it for the rest of my life.

However whatever happens I shall most certainly not be resigning my membership of this page. Neither will I give all of my Chopin and Rachmaninov to the charity shop or stop going to piano gigs.

Blame will lie with a) my late mother (working class boys go to Scouts, football and fascist marches in West Brom, not piano lessons, which, according to her was only for homosexual middle class ~~~~~~~s) and b) one local piano teacher who told me to my face I was the awkwardest person she'd ever had the misfortune to teach. This person is STILL teaching piano, saw her last October.

dave brum wrote:I cried myself to sleep last night. Haven't done that for years, but trying to learn the piano and failing all of the time is really making me unhappy.

So I've come to a decision. I'm going to give it a month and if I still feel the same way on March 13th, then that really will be it, I shall resign myself to the fact I shall never do what I've always wanted to do - and maybe regret it for the rest of my life.

Oh, Dave! <h> Now what does it say on your avatar? something about loving music? Maybe by not playng pieces - in ANY shape or form - you've moved away from the music-making side of it.

Here's a suggestion: try improvising. Now, I'm sure some people have said that before, but I've had a lot of my quite young kids doing this recently (as well as the older ones, not trying to suggest that it's the baby's way out!)

I bought, on someone's recommendation, a set of books called Pattern Play, which work on whatever level you like, but the first thing is that one person, usually the teacher, plays an accompanying pattern and the other one improvises above it. I would have thought this was too "loose" to produce anything apart from just scribble in many cases, but I've been amazed. Some of them started as scribble at first, but it really developed.

There are some videos on YouTube, (look for Pattern Play or Akiko and Forrest Kinney) though they may be a bit off-putting at first because they're there to show just how very good they can be - but possibly you need something to show just how good "you" can be, which is something different. The first piece is called World Piece and over a gentle repeated bass, you just play on the black keys, anything, absolutely anything you like, you can't be wrong. The second, which is about as far as most of mine have got, is called Blues on Black, and the person on the upper part plays on black notes again, but with the addition of an A natural, which makes all the difference to getting a bluesy effect, together with using a swing rhythm. There are ways of adapting it to make it completely solo, but... as and when, eh?

Unfortunately there don't seem to be a lot of simple tutotial videos on these, but I'm going to be making a couple of videos of the accompanying pattern, repeated many times and building up etc, so that some of mine can do it at home. If you'd like me to let you know when I've done it, either on here or as a message, I'll send you a link.

Remember that some of the greatest music ever written fell out of the end of someone's fingers first of all. I might just be a way of geting you back to "making music". You could of course find another player who has or uses these books, or even get your own, but I had to buy mine online from the US, which makes it a bit pricey.

I don't know, all I know is that I'm sick to death of the whole god damn thing. And I'm sick to death of coming on here moaning that I can't play and that every method I try goes t*ts up when I'd prefer to be saying how well I'm doing and posting links to me playing pieces on YouTube.

Best not to be playing at all if it causes me this much trouble. I am just not one of nature's little piano players. Maybe my gifts lie elsewhere, like foreign languages???

dave brum wrote:
Had an email back from this teacher. And, surprise surprise....

I am not sure I would dare to take you on, to be honest

I have never had an experience of people with your issues at all

and

I have never dealt with people like you, to be frank

There you go. It's official. I am 100% unteachable. And getting over it as I type.

I did a double take when I read the last line of that reply, as I thought it said "I have never dealt with people like you, you freak"

However, "people like you" is bad enough. There are no "people like you" any more than there are "people like me". With someone that undiplomatic, you don't need it anyway.

But you don't exactly need a "piano teacher" as such, do you? You know (oh yes you do) that you used to be able to read the notes, which means that with the wind in the right direction, you could get that back; you have had enough piano technique to be able to play the Wild Horseman and Tastenritt, so you don't need someone who's going to show you how to do things like that. What you need is more like a mentor, or possibly someone who's going through it with you. Rather than someone you pay an hourly fee to for instruction. I don't think anyone on here is in the right position to help you find that person because none of us are local.

You could research music therapy, though. When I googled I found an awful lot of places in the USA but it might be the channel to go through. There are plenty of music therapists in this country, and while they might not all be piano teachers as such, someone might know someone who knows someone... You were toold once before "I'm a piano teacher, not a psychotherapist" but you know, unless the emphasis has changed, music therapy training used to be for qualified and experienced musicians who wanted to extend into health issues, not for nurses etc who fancied adding a bit of music to what they were doing, in other words if you find someone that way, not only will you get someone who is focussed on *your* specific need, but they will also know what they're doing as a musician.

Stay on here with us and let us know if you have any luck in that direction (meanwhile I'll let you know when and if I get my improv accompaniments uploaded, so you can play a duet with no wrong notes - becasue there's no such thing in improvisation - from a safe distance)

Now, change of subject: has anyone heard from Gill? Is she underwater?

I had to use Google to look up Tastenritt in order to jog my memory but the clip I watched was actually played at the correct speed. I always used to play that at a much slower speed but with that I never actually sight read that piece. I did do it bar by bar just so as I could learn the piece, with lots of cheating using Youtube, then I just let my ears take over. I always put the music on the stand because that's what you're supposed to do. I never used to actually look at it - playing by ear meant I could concentrate on what both of my hands were doing. Whenever any piano teacher used to present me with a new piece to learn I would fill with fear and dread, meaning I never learned how to do it properly in the first place. A good teacher would have realised this instantly but I guess my (at that time) keenness to do exams may have played a part in why teachers were as keen to get me through them. My mistake. I haven't played this piece for many years now (probably why I had to google it).

I remember my favourite piano teacher (!) gave me bloody Gymnopedie (Classics To Moderns 3) one day. I practiced it for 2 weeks and attempted to play it in front of her and made cock up after cock up. I tried to tell her plainly '******, I CANNOT play this' but she wouldn't listen. Next week she had me playing it again. Again I practiced it, again I put me foot in it, again ******'s attitude was 'I can play this and you can't'. That's when I burst into tears and she had a go at me. The rest you know. So Gizzy, you're right I used to be able to read the notes. Gorffennol. Past tense. Now, if she'd have given me something from further on in CTM2, as indeed, they're supposed to get harder as you go through the book. Then I possibly might have had a thin chance of actually getting somewhere. Again, she may have thought that if she can play it easily THEREFORE I can too. But it doesn't work like that. Everybody's needs are different.

More or less the same with The Wild Horseman (exam piece, also CTM 2 if my memory serves me well). But because I found sight reading difficult it has stopped me from learning new pieces. It's alright for you Gizzy, Gill, Markymark and co, you can look at a piece of written dots and loops on a piano or organ and turn it into a tune. I cannot - and this means I cannot learn new tunes. Imagine if it took twelve months just to learn to say something like 'comment allez vous?' or read a page of a Ladybird Peter and Jane book, well that's how it is with me and staves. And before you say 'well anyone can learn' I've tried for 8 years and I'm none the wiser. But then again, I'm my own worst enemy, aren't I!!

I also do think I live in the wrong area of the UK as far as getting a music teacher is concerned. You've oft seen me going on about the fact there is nowhere in Birmingham where one can buy sheet music, apart from a small corner of a rock orientated guitar shop in town. And that reflects the sort of city I live. Birmingham and its metropolitan region has truly earned a national reputation for being uncultured, downtrodden, dirty, working class and chavvish, so shortage of music teachers (good ones) are only to be expected in the West Midlands. It certainly is very much easier in Birmingham to get a gun than a piano teacher!! Compare that with other major British cities like Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol and even Nottingham that have lots and lots of good piano and music teachers and thriving cultural scenes. I HAVE done my homework on this and done lots of research as I've contacted piano teachers around old Albion.

But even if I did live in Leeds or whatever, I would still have the same issues regarding my ability to learn/attitude/et cetera. Possibly it might had helped me personally if I actually KNEW people who either played, or are learning the piano. Then we could have done duets and things, something I never actually did until I had my lesson in Cardiff last November (which I enjoyed so much). I certainly would not be sat here typing these regretful lines if I was going to the Cardiff teacher for regular lessons.

I did say about knee jerk reactions, and that I would give it one month to think about whether I want to continue trying to learn the piano or whether I just accept defeat but with the benefit of knowing I've given it my all.

It really gets up my nose when a piano teacher who decides they cannot help me out signs off an email with the words 'Don't give up' because what they really mean is the exact opposite, given the fact they've just thrown a proverbial pie in your face. Yet another piano teacher, this one is around 22 miles from me, has asked me to explain my situation and where I am with my learning in an email received by myself yesterday. I of course replied, giving as much information as I possibly could - and nothing back in 24 hours. At least the 'never come across people like you' email was honest, which I admire - but why do these people say 'don't give up when they know it's much more likely than not that I will??

He wants me to email him to tell me more but do you know what - I really can't be bothered with sending this bloke a long email telling of my misfortunes, whether or not he is a good teacher. I've been down that road several times and it's gotten me nowhere. Should I telephone him or not?? I'll have to think about it over a nice cup of Rosie.

dave brum wrote:I'm guessing Gill has either been evacuated, or she has lost power.

Neither; just ended up overwound, I think, and had to take a few days in bed to recover. Better now, and hubby out of hospital and staying out till they summon him back for radiotherapy. So I'm back to slap your legs, David, if i catch wind of self-pity or giving up noises. Just sit at the keyboard and noodle around or look at YT for vids on improvisation. HAVE FUN. Or I shall come and get you.

dave brum wrote:I'm guessing Gill has either been evacuated, or she has lost power.

Neither; just ended up overwound, I think, and had to take a few days in bed to recover. Better now, and hubby out of hospital and staying out till they summon him back for radiotherapy. So I'm back to slap your legs, David, if i catch wind of self-pity or giving up noises. Just sit at the keyboard and noodle around or look at YT for vids on improvisation. HAVE FUN. Or I shall come and get you.

How do I do THAT?? And what with?? No good doing it if you haven't got a Scooby Doo!

You've only got to leave this page for a few days and everything goes base over apex.

Last edited by dave brum on 15 Feb 2014, 21:31, edited 1 time in total.

Had a darn good butt kicking from 'she who must be obeyed' this morning, it seems she knew I'd not been playing for a week. She knew all along. I think she knows how much being able to play the piano means to me, but I did tell her it was getting obsessive. But if it is getting obsessive, isn't it best to leave alone rather than feed the obsession???

YT can be a minefield. There are impostors galore on there. Think I should leave the whole thing alone for a few weeks and just see how I feel afterwards. All I know is that I'm so disenchanted and I'm really at rock bottom...and I don't know what to do. Which is why I want to leave alone for a while, but keep myself open to new options.....and of course miracles.

Look at my YT channel Gill for a clip of me playing at my first teachers' concert back in 2009. You know the address.

Complete and utter gibberish. I know what note values are. I know what line is what and what space is what in each clef. I can even point to and play each respective note from the stave onto the keyboard. My problem is that I cannot actually put the whole lot together to produce a tune! Makes more sense to me than those videos.

Once again I feel that I should apologise to people over the nature of some of my negative comments over the past couple of weeks.

Those of youse that know me will be aware of the neurotic mental health condition I have suffered with over the past sixteen years and the current exceptionally bad bout of it I'm coming out of has led to imbalances in my brain systems that have caused me to have this negative state of mind.

Working in a bookshop however has enabled me to come across a very interesting self-help book which I started yesterday and am learning many things about how I think, feel and behave that no physician or counsellor has told me over the past 16 years, apart from one local NHS funded CBT therapist who 'sowed the seeds' of the line of natural user-therapy I wish to pursue in the weeks ahead.

I will not be removing any negative comments I have made on this thread as I wish to use them as reference and analysis of their impact upon my thinking.

And also I will not be giving up learning to play the piano, but in this particular field I will be re-training my brain, with the help of the book and my wife, to think about the whole concept differently, as ultimately our thoughts govern our feelings, our behaviour and our view of the world. Change our thinking, change our feeling and our behaviour automatically. So I think I'll never learn the piano. My behaviour will be that I don't want to learn the piano, and I will always think the world doesn't want me to learn the piano. If I change the thought to 'I will and I want to learn the piano' and change the negativities that might arise along the way that might give rise to thoughts of failure, it will mean the experience will be happy and I will learn.

Less of the Karl Marx and Charlie Brooker, more of the John Lennon and the Dalai Lama!!

I have been reading about a trait I have noticed, and is quite prominent in some of my postings, and that is the subject of defeative brain states. That we've tried and lost. That we're personally inadequate somehow. That we don't conform to how we perceive we should be and that failure means we're not normal. This leads to an inferiority complex and subordination. So if we fail to learn the piano, we're some sort of (excuse my political incorrectness) spazz. Defeat.

Feelings of defeat are normal but they are just to be accepted and not to be hastily acted upon (right, that's it I'm going to sell my piano and am never even going to look at a piano ever again in my life),ruminated upon (self-anger and self-pity) and seen as anything greater than a setback. In other words work with these feelings, recognise where they're coming from and re-evaluate our expectations so they can be within our reach so they don't defeat us.

I've also read a case study about someone who cannot control his emotions after getting a setback. So I'll put it into a real case study. Dave wants to learn the piano. He has hopes of passing all his ABRSM grades and even playing the organ at his local church. He wants so desperately to succeed, so he goes to a teacher but because of the castle he's built in the air and unattainable goal he's set hisself (plus his attitude of mistrust to his teacher) it doesn't work out and he is disappointed. But rather than accept this setback he puts on a front and goes to another teacher with an even more aggressive attitude. The situation gets worse as teacher becomes apprehensive and scared of Dave, and Dave himself becomes more convinced he's a failure so he becomes angry disgusted and builds up CONTEMPT for piano teachers. So he tries to teach himself with yet another false front but the unrealism still remains along with the sense of failure which hasn't been dealt with. The failure is reinforced by putting on yet another piggish front and self-penalty of obsessively playing scales for two hours every night which adds to the frustration, anger, and self-denigration.

Dave should have learned to stop his emotions running away with him at the time of teacher 1 but before that he should have set hisself a reachable goal so the sense of defeat (which is anatural state of mind) can be controlled and seen as just a minor blip and also stopped the whole thing from feeding thoughts of self-condemnation and inferiority, such as being too old to learn the piano (he happens to be 44 years old).

Dave also needs to learn that the piano teachers whom he hates and mistrusts are NOT AT FAULT and that he is blaming them for HIS OWN ILLS which he cannot control and his inability to examine the emotional systems that are causing this state of mind and balance them out with stimulation of the two other emotional systems of soothing/contentment and also that of drive and achievement (in order to learn to play the piano....realistically).